Hacksilber in the Late Roman and Early Medieval world – economics, frontier politics and imperial legacies

Hacksilber is often seen as the poor relation of Roman silver. ¹ Great hoards of plate such as Mildenhall or Kaiseraugst catch the imagination with the glimpses they offer into the world of the Late Roman aristocracy.Yet hoards containing battered and broken fragments of these same vessels were long blamed on destructive barbarians, and interpreted as a symbol of the difference between the civilised Roman world and the peoples beyond its gates. ² The picture is not so straightforward. New work on Hacksilber is revealing fresh insights into the nature of the Late Roman economy and, of most relevance here, relationships across and beyond the frontier in the Late Roman and Early Medieval period.This paper draws on two ongoing projects at National Museums Scotland: one to re-examine the great Hacksilber hoard from Traprain Law in south-east Scotland, the largest such hoard known (fig. 1); ³ and the Glenmorangie Research Project which is reassessing silver use in Scotland from AD 300-900 in a wider European context. ⁴ Here, we shall review the current state of play on the phenomenon of Hacksilber in terms of distribution, date and character. We will then focus on the Scottish finds and place them in a wider context to see what light they can shed on frontier politics and social dynamics in the late and post-Roman north-west provinces.